


£5" 



a National ffittubersitg. 



REPORT 



MADE BY 



CHARLES W. ELIOT, 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 



NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 



(department of higher instruction,) 



w>. 



August 5, 1873. 



{ 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



i UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. J 
I 



S CAMBRIDGE: 

CHARLES W. SEVER. 
1874. 



ic m 

1074 



a Kational JEnibersitg. 



REPORT 



MADE BY 



CHARLES W. ELIOT, 

PEE SIDE NT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 



NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 

(DEPARTMENT of higher instruction,) 

August 5, 1873. 




i CAMBRIDGE: 
CHARLES W. SEVER. 

1874. 









\> 






jAKrAET 20. 1874 

To President Eliot. Harvard Univ-: 

See.. — The attention of C — Ing been directed by the President to 

:: a National Ur : Washington, the undersigned, learning 

■r report on this sribje . : :: Ike National Educational Association is ont 

of print, request yon to permit its republication. They do • i g that 

Ae opinions e ■ :: l = srr~e Ac careful consideration of Congress and 

the comnmz 

faithfully yonr; 

Theoboee D. Woolset, X. HaTen, Ct- 

B. R. Citexis. Boston, 
He^et C. Lea, Philadelphia, 

C. J. Stille. Philadelphia. 
Hexrt C. Caeet. Philadelphia, 
C. E. Adams, Quincy, Mass. 

■ 1EOE WlLLIAM ClT2TI5. New York. 

E. L. Godeis, New York. 



Haet a tj t i Ustvebsttt. 27 Jan.. 18741 
Geftlejmet. — Mr report upon • A National Er 

- should be reprinted ai juest I count an honor, and Is: 

glad to haTe the attention af leg ton and the public thus drawn to it. 

I am, with great respect, your obedient am * a nt, 

Charles W. Eliot. 

To Eex. Dr. Woolset, Hon. B. B. Cubtis, and others. 



A NATIONAL UXITEESITT 



This report has three parts. — first, an account of what 
this association has done about a national university since 
• (PP- 3— ~) ; secondly, an examination of two bills on 
the subject, which were brought before Congress in 1^72. 
(pp. 8-18) : and. lastly, a discussion of the true policy of our 
government upon this matter, (pp. 18-23.) 
/ At the conclusion of an address on "The Progress :: 
University Education.^ delivered by Dr. John W. Hoyt, 
of Wisconsin, before the National Teachers' Association at 
Trenton. Xew Jersey, on the 20th of August. 1S69. the fol- 
lowing resolution was unanimously adopted : — 

"jBei I. That, in the opinion of thi .-.tion, a great 

American university is a leading want of American education, 
and that, in order to contribute to the early establishment of 
such an institution, the president of this ss /.rion. acting in 
concert with the president of the National Superintendents' 
Association, is hereby requested to appoint a committee con- 
sisting of one member from each of the States, and of which 
Dr. J. W. Hoyt. of "Wisconsin, shall be chairman, to take the 
whole matter into consideration, and to make such report 
thereon, at the next annual convention of said association, as 
shall seem to be demanded by the interests of the country." 

This committee was duly appointed, but did nothing what- 
ever during the year 1869-70. Nevertheless the chairman, 
acting in the name of the committee, presented at the C 
land meeting, in August. 1870, what was called ** a preliminary 
report." and asked that the committee might have more time. 
This preliminary report describes, in elevated h a oage, the 
••leading offices of a true university," compares our existing 



institutions with European universities, paints a glowing pict- 
ure of the future of the United States, sets forth with enthu- 
siasm what a great university would do for the country, 
avoids all embarrassing details, leaves the precise character of 
the institution, its location, its constitution and mode of gov- 
ernment, quite undefined, and assumes only this, — that there 
should be one great central institution, and that for the found- 
ing and endowing thereof the private citizen, the State, and 
the general government must unite. It passed by all matters 
likely to suggest objections, and called for no specific action 
whatever on the part of the association : the chairman alone 
was responsible for it, and it bore only his signature. Of 
course the report was accepted, and the request for more time 
was granted. 

At the St. Louis meeting of the National Educational Asso- 
ciation, in August, 1871, Dr. Hoyt and a minority of the com- 
mittee appointed in 1869 presented a second report. This 
report again avoids all details of what the proposed institution 
should be, and where it should be, but says in general terms 
that it should be comprehensive, high, free, rich, untrammelled 
by considerations of section, party, or creed, and so co-ordi- 
nated with the other institutions of the country as in no way 
to conflict with them. Further, this second report defines in 
some measure what the preliminary report vaguely spoke of 
as the necessary co-operation of the citizen, the State, and the 
general government. //It appears in the second report that 
" the original endowment . . . will need to be furnished by 
the government, and Congress must therefore determine the 
general terms and conditions upon which the institution shall 
be administered ; " that " proper authorities in the several 
States may have a voice in its management," and " that indi- 
vidual citizens and associations of citizens should be cordially 
invited to endow such departments ... as shall most enlist 
their sympathies." The report then presents some arguments 
in favor of the right of Congress to endow a university, and 
says that the idea of a national university " is in perfect har- 
mony with the policy and practice of the government," and 
that " it remains but to determine the means best calculated 



to secure the adoption of the most judicious plan for the in- 
stitution, and to insure the congressional and other aid nec- 
essary to the full success of the enterprise." Thereupon the 
committee recommend that " there be raised a new and per- 
manent committee of less numbers than the present — say 
fifteen — ... to be known as the national university com- 
mittee," " that a quite limited number of members thereof 
should be a quorum for the transaction of business at airy 
regularly called meeting, and that a majority shall have power 
to supply . . . vacancies . . ." The concluding sentence of 
the report is as follows : " A committee of this character 
would be able, in the first place, to concentrate the best 
thought of the country upon the various important questions 
involved in the perfection of a plan for the institution ; and, 
secondly, to marshal the strength of the country in syste- 
matic and effective support of the measure, when at last for- 
mally brought to the attention of Congress." This report 
was signed by a little less than half of the members of the 
original committee. The report was accepted, and the pro- 
posed permanent committee of fifteen was appointed.^ I do 
not find that the number of members of this committee which 
should constitute a quorum was fixed by the association. By 
taking this action at the St. Louis meeting, the association 
showed that it entertained the idea of a single dominant 
university for the country, and contemplated, without dis- 
approbation, the establishment thereof by the general govern- 
ment : and, through its committee, the association undertook, 
— first, to prepare a plan for such an institution ; and, sec- 
ondly, to urge the plan, when prepared, upon Congress. 

The permanent committee appointed in August, 1871, under 
these circumstances, had serious work to do, and grave re- 
sponsibilities to bear. What has it done ? The members 
were all very busy men, and they were scattered over the 
country, from Massachusetts to Oregon, and from Minnesota 
to Louisiana. Several of them were appointed without their 
knowledge and consent. The natural consequence has fol- 
lowed : there has never been a meeting of the committee 
competent to transact business. Nine of the gentlemen whose 



6 

names were announced at St. Louis as members of this com- 
mittee have informed me that they never attended a meeting 
of the committee ; two more members never attended any- 
meeting, except a brief one in a hotel parlor at St. Louis 
shortly after the committee was named, — a meeting which 
could not possibly have been competent to transact business. 
Of the other four members, one is the chairman, two have 
been long absent from home and inaccessible to my inquiries, 
and one has not answered my letters.!/ It is obvious that, as a 
body authorized to speak and act in the name of the National 
Educational Association, this committee has never had a mo- 
ment's existence. I congratulate the association that it is 
thus far free from all responsibility for whatever may have 
been done since August, 1871, about a national university. 
The permanent committee which the association then consti- 
tuted upon this subject was never organized, and no one has 
had any authority to speak in its name or in the name of the 
association. 

Notwithstanding this state of things, some not unimpor- 
tant action was taken in the spring of 1 872, looking to the 
establishment of a national university by Congress. Two 
bills to establish a national university were brought into 
the Senate ; one of which was drawn by Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of 
Wisconsin, the chairman of the committee appointed at St. 
Louis, and was presented at his request by Senator Sawyer, 
of South Carolina. // Of this bill, so well informed a person as 
General Eaton, Commissioner of Education, himself a member 
of the St. Louis committee, says, in a letter to me, " It is the 
one, as I understand the facts, which was favored by the com- 
mittee appointed by the National Education Association, of 
which Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of Madison, Wis., is chairman." 
There is no doubt that this was the common impression among 
persons who knew any thing about the presentation of the bill 
brought in by Senator Sawyer on the 20th of May, 1872. It 
behooves the association to understand how this impression 
was produced, and what grounds there were for such, an opin- 
ion. Dr. Hoyt has been for the past four years chairman of 
a committee on a national university, appointed by the Na- 



tional Educational Association ; and the action of the associa- 
tion in 1871 made him chairman of a permanent committee, 
although the committee has never met. In that capacity he 
wrote letters, in the winter of 1871-72, to a large number of 
jiersons interested in education, asking their opinions and 
advice about a national universit}^ and enclosing a draft of a 
bill to establish such an institution. These letters undoubt- 
edly got more attention from the persons addressed, because, 
in manjr cases at least, they were written on the paper of the 
Bureau of Education at Washington, and were sent out from 
that office with envelopes for the free transmission of the replies 
back to the bureau. Dr. Hoyt has also talked, in the course 
of the last four years, with a considerable number of persons 
professionally concerned with education upon the subject of a 
national university, and has received from them a mass of 
suggestions and opinions in great variety. Among the per- 
sons so consulted by him, either orally or in writing, were 
most of the members of the committee named at St. Louis. 
Three or four of the committee felt a real interest in the sub- 
ject, and devoted some attention to it ; but they never had 
the advantage of common consultation, and all their sugges- 
tions were filtered through the mind of the chairman. The 
bill brought into the Senate by Senator Sawyer was therefore 
the work of a private citizen, having a certain indorsement 
from this association, who consulted such persons as he 
thought best to consult, and took as much of their advice as 
he liked. It was in no proper sense the work of this associa- 
tion, or of any committee thereof. The impression that it was 
favored by a committee of this association has only this war- 
rant, that parts of it commended themselves to certain gentle- 
men who were named in 1871 on a committee which was never 
organized, and who therefore had only their individual opin- 
ions to express.// I have been thus particular in describing 
what has taken' place in regard to the project for a national 
university which was started in this association in 1869, 
because, as I examined the matter, I thought that, partly 
through easy good-nature, and partly through that haste 
in the transaction of business which is almost unavoidable in 



such a large assemblage as this, coming together for two or 
three days once a year, the association had run a serious risk 
of being placed in a false position before the public upon a 
subject of much importance to American education. It has 
seemed to me that the association would do well to be cautious 
about constituting permanent committees, and about passing 
general declaratory resolutions, particularly if the resolutions 
convey a recommendation to some superior power, as to Con- 
gress, a State legislature, or the public at large. 

I now pass to the second part of my subject, — an examin- 
ation of the two bills to establish a national university, which 
were presented in the Senate in the spring of 1872. These 
two bills are tentative plans for creating a crowning university, 
richer, better, and more comprehensive than any existing in- 
stitution, and under the patronage of the general government. 
They are the work of private individuals only, and nothing 
has thus far come of them ; but they are before the country as 
having been read twice and referred to the Committee on 
Education and Labor in the Senate of the United States.// In 
the bill presented by Senator Howe, of Wisconsin, March 1 
25, 1872, the different faculties of the proposed university 
are all specified to the number of ten, and the professorships 
in each faculty are designated in detail, except in the faculties 
of military science and naval science. The same authority 
which establishes a faculty or a professorship can, of course, 
abolish either at any moment, and so get rid of unpopular in- 
cumbents. The president of the university is to be appointed 
by the President of the United States, with the consent of the 
Senate. The heads of the ten faculties are to be appointed 
by the president of the university, with the consent of the 
Senate of the United States. The president and the heads 
of faculties constitute an executive senate of the university. 
Professors are to be appointed, and may be removed, by this 
university senate, and private teachers are to be licensed by 
the same body. The president is to have the same salary as 
the Chief-Justice of the United States, and the heads of fac- 
ulties are to have the salary of a judge of a District Court 



of the United States./' These places are desirable so far as pay, 
patronage, and conspicuousness go ; they would be desired 
by a great number of incompetent people ; the more so be- 
cause these eleven officers would never be brought, like a 
professor, to any public test of their capacity. There is no 
reason whatever to suppose that the appointments would be 
made on any better method than that which now prevails in 
United States custom-houses and post-offices. We are dis- 
gracefully habituated to custom-house " rings " and post-office 
" rings ; " last winter the newspapers talked much of an agri- 
cultural college " ring." The spectacle of a national university 
" ring " would be even less edifying. There is, indeed, in the 
bill a futile attempt to make the tenure of office of the presi- 
dent of the university the same as that of the judges of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court, 
however, was not established by Congress, but by the Con- 
stitution, and the judges of that court are consequently out 
of the reach of Congress : the president of a university 
established by act of Congress would not be. The bill gives 
no security whatever that all the appointments in the univer- 
sity would not be of the nature of political appointments. 
This is a fatal defect in any congressional bill to establish a 
university, so long as the principles of appointment to United 
States offices and the tenure of those offices remain what they 
now are. The only tenure of office which is fit for a teacher 
is the tenure during good behavior and competency ; and this 
is the only tenure which will secure the services of competent 
professors in colleges and universities. The frequency of the 
elections of teachers is a very bad feature in our public school 
system. Permanence of tenure is necessary to make the 
position of a teacher one of dignity and independence. Young 
men of vigor and capacity will not enter a profession which 
offers no money prizes, unless they are induced by its stability 
and peacefulness, and by the social consideration which at- 
taches to it. The system which prevails in most of our large 
cities and towns, of electing the teachers in the public schools 
at least as often as once a year, is inconsistent with this 
dignity, peacefulness and consideration, unless a firmly estab- 



10 

lished custom of re-electing incumbents converts the con- 
stantly recurring elections into mere formalities. We must 
all bitterly deplore the mortifying fact that, for more than a 
generation, neither dignity, peacefulness, nor social considera- 
tion has attached to any appointment in the civil service of 
the United States. The man appointed has sometimes adorned 
his office, but the office has never adorned the man. Until 
the service of the United States becomes, through a complete 
reform, at least as respectable and secure as the service of a 
bank, an insurance company, a manufacturing corporation, or 
a railroad company, not to speak of college and academy cor- 
porations, Congress cannot establish a university which will 
command the respect of educated Americans or win the con- 
fidence of the country, unless the appointing power for the 
university is made absolutely independent of all political in- 
fluence. So far from doing this, the bill before us provides no 
effectual barrier whatever against political appointments. In 
several sections of the bill, there is a provision that, for certain 
appointments, certain specified classes of persons shall " re- 
ceive the preference," — a provision of no binding or effective 
force whatever. There is only one really efficient provision 
of this character in the bill presented by Senator Howe, and 
that one might reasonably give serious concern to persons 
who live in the territories, forts, arsenals, navy yards, and 
light-houses of the United States. It is provided in section 
sixteen, that, after the year 1880, graduates of the national 
university in medicine and surgery " shall alone be entitled to 
practice medicine and surgery in any territory over which the 
United States shall have exclusive jurisdiction." 
' I shall barely mention some of the minor faults of Senator 
Howe's bill. To an experienced college official, the following 
description of the qualifications for admission to the university 
seems absurdly vague : " a good moral character, and such 
intellectual attainments as are indicated by graduation at the 
colleges, universities, and best class of high schools, as estab- 
lished by law in the several States of the United States." 
With the author of this bill, the four years of study which 
generally come between graduation at a high school and grad- 



11 

uation at a college count for nothing at all. Universities 
and high schools are spoken of as equivalent institutions. 
There maybe States in this Union in which this classification 
is essentially correct ; but there certainly are not a few States 
in which it is conspicuously iDexact. 

The bill provides that professors shall receive salaries vary- 
ing from 81,000 to 82,500 a year, and that each professor may 
also exact a fee of ten dollars a year from each student attend- 
ing his course. Under this system, the professors of popular 
subjects might thrive ; but I fear that the professors of Oriental 
philosophy, scholasticism, Sclavonic languages, the Coptic 
language, ecclesiastical law, and similar rather remote subjects, 
would starve. Neither students nor teachers in this country 
like the fee system ; it has worked well in Germany, but has 
never been domesticated here, except in medical schools, where 
it has done a great deal of harm. It creates a disagreeable 
money relation between teacher and student, and introduces 
into a faculty illiberal contentions. By section eighteen of 
this comprehensive bill, the military academy is removed from 
West Point, and so changed as to be practically abolished. 
This measure seems rather too grave to be brought in as an 
incidental part of a bill to establish a national university. 

The seventeenth section, relating to the faculty of agricult- 
ure, gives countenance to delusions which have already done 
much mischief in the United States, and still bid fair to cause 
further waste of public and private resources. The first of 
these delusions is the model farm. The model farm, like the 
model machine-shop, is almost universally a model of nothing 
but misapplied labor, misdirected experimentation, and unprof- 
itable investment. It can be useful to the young agriculturist 
only as a warning ; it can teach him how to spend money, 
but not how to make money on a farm. The other mischiev- 
ous delusion to which I wish to call attention is that the labor 
of a young man upon a farm for four hours a day is in any 
sense compensation for his board, lodging, clothing, and 
tuition. All such arrangements are charities injudiciously dis- 
guised from the recipients. It is this disguise which makes 
the general method so well fitted to breed shirks. There 



12 

lurks in all devices of this sort the notion that study and 
thinking are not physical exertions ; so that, after prolonged 
study, a man may be just as fit for physical labor as if he had 
not worked with his brains. This is a profound mistake, 
which has real danger for conscientious and ambitious youth ; 
such young persons may easily be betrayed by this false 
opinion into disastrous over-exertion. What is called mental 
labor is really the most exhausting, continuous, physical exer- 
tion which men can make, although the sense of fatigue from 
an excess of what is called brain-work is generally not so irre- 
sistible at the moment as the fatigue caused by too much 
hammering, hoeing, or walking. Section twenty-one of this 
bill provides " that the seat of the university shall be at the 
capital of the United States." I reserve this point for discus- 
sion in connection with the other bill, to which I now invite 
your attention. 

The important feature in the bill presented in the Senate by 
Senator Sawyer, on the 20th of May, 1872, is the mode in which 
its author endeavored to provide a government for the uni- 
versity which would have some chance of being free from 
political influences ; or, in other words, to deprive the govern- 
ment of the United States of all power over the university 
from the moment of its establishment, — except, of course, 
the power to abolish it. By this bill, the government of the 
university is vested in a board of regents, numbering fifty- 
five persons ; a council of education, numbering seventeen 
persons ; a council of faculties, which includes all the ex- 
ecutive officers of the university and all professors ; and a 
general council of the university, " composed of all mem- 
bers of the board of regents, council of education, council 
of faculties, and all graduates of the university of five years' 
standing." The last-named body, which, in the course 
of years, would become very numerous, has only power to 
make recommendations to the other boards. The duties of 
the council of faculties are not prescribed with distinctness. 
The real governing bodies are the board of regents and the 
council of education. It is provided " that the board of re- 
gents shall consist of one member from each State of the 



13 

United States, to be appointed by the governor thereof, with 
the advice and consent of the chief justice and the superin- 
tendent of public instruction, or other like officer of his State ; 
five members from the country at large, to be appointed by 
the President of the United States, with the advice and con- 
sent of the Chief Justice, commissioner of education, and 
chief officer of the university, and the following membe 

.' to wit, the Chief Justice of the United States, commis- 
sioner of education, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner 
of patents, superintendent of the coast survey, superinten- 
dent of the naval observatory, secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution, president of the National Academy of Sciences, 
president of the Xational Educational Association, presi- 
dent of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, president of the American Philological Associa- 
tion, president of the American Social Science Association, 
and the chief officer of the university : fifteen to be a quo- 
rum." The members representing States are to serve six 
years, and the members at large ten years. The specified 
duties of the regents are •• to enact laws for the government 
of the university, to elect the officers thereof, to determine 
the general conditions of admission to the university, and to 
confer appropriate degrees." Ir is expressly declared that 
** no faculty shall be organized, no chair created, no salary 
determined, and no professor appointed or removed without 
the approval of the board of regents." TVith so large an 
organization to direct, and such important powers to exercise. 
the board of regents would need to have several meetin_- 
year. Two meetings a year would obviously be the least 
possible number. The cumbrousness and the costliness of >o 
large a board, with its members scattered all over the coun- 
try, need not be enlarged upon. 

It is obvious that the author of the bill did not expect the 
members of the board of regents to attend its meetings with 
much constancy, for he named a quorum which is only one 
more than a quarter of the number of members. To name a 
small quorum for a large body of trustees, regents, or direc- 
tors, is to countenance that neglect of their duty on the part 



14 

of the supposed managers of public and private institutions 
of trust, charity, or education, which has been so frequently 
and so grievously illustrated during the past few years. 

The principle upon which the board is chiefly made up 
is a very questionable one. Why should there be one 
member from each State in the governing board of a uni- 
versity about which there is to be nothing sectional, secta- 
rian, or partisan? Such a principle of local representation 
implies that Maine and Oregon, Minnesota and Florida, may 
have different interests in the institution. The different 
States of the Union may easily have different interests about 
customs, internal taxes, banking, railroads, canals, commerce, 
and mail routes ; so that our legislative bodies are naturally 
formed on the principle of local representation ; but there is 
no reason for a similar constitution of the government of a 
university. Philology, history, philosophy, science, and mathe- 
matics, are the same in Massachusetts and California. The 
professorships might as well be divided among the different 
States, as the places in the board of regents. Indeed, if this 
vicious principle were admitted in the constitution of the 
chief governing board, we should fully expect to see the 
university offices parcelled out among the different States, 
just as political appointments now are. 

There are twelve ex-officio members of the board of regents, 
none of whom, in all probability, could give the smallest atten- 
tion to this function of governing a university. Take, for in- 
stance, the Chief Justice of the United States, the commissioner 
of education, the superintendent of the coast survey, and the 
secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ; each of these offi- 
cials is fully occupied with the regular work of his own proper 
office. It is an imposition upon these gentlemen to make 
them devote time and thought to a matter so utterly distinct 
from their official employment as the management of a uni- 
versity ; and, if they are not to give time and thought to the 
university, the public are imposed upon by the list of ex-officio 
members of the board of regents. I know no surer way to 
procure an inefficient body of trustees than to constitute it in 
good part of officials, who will probably have but a slender 



15 

interest in the matter of the trust, and whose regular duties 
leave them little time and strength for extraneous functions 
involving labor and responsibility. 

The author of the bill doubtless perceived that the board 
of regents would be an unwieldy and incompetent body ; 
he therefore contrived a sort of executive committee, called 
the council of education. This council consists of six 
regents, six members of the council of faculties, and five 
ex-officio members ; to wit, the chief officer of the univer- 
sity, commissioner of education, superintendent of the coast 
survey, superintendent of the naval observatory, and sec- 
retary of the Smithsonian Institution. Of this body of sev- 
enteen members, ten is a quorum. This is the working 
body. It is charged, in the language of the bill, " with 
the organization of faculties, the appointment and re- 
moval of professors and teachers, and, in general, with 
the educational management of the university ; " but it sub- 
sequently appears that in all these things the approval of the 
board of regents is essential. The council of education is the 
board which would attend to details and prepare the business 
of the board of regents. It would have to meet very fre- 
quently, and, as the presence of its ex-officio members would 
ordinarily be out of the question, three out of the six regents 
from as many different States would have to be called in to 
make a quorum. The resident officers and professors of the 
university would supply the other seven members. A board 
thus constituted is an untried experiment ; its working would 
be a curious problem. The majority of its active members 
would be professors, who would be called upon to advise the 
regents about all questions of appointment, pay, rank, and 
promotion, concerning their colleagues and themselves. The 
object which the author of this bill had in view in devising 
this elaborate arrangement of governing boards for his uni- 
versity, was a laudable one, — namely, to detach the national 
university from the national government ; but his scheme is 
too novel, complicated, and unpromising to command the 
confidence of persons experienced in conducting educational 
institutions. 



16 

In singular contrast with the general tenor of this bill, the 
fifteenth section gives Senators and Representatives a right 
to nominate candidates from their respective States or dis- 
tricts for scholarships which secure free tuition for five years, 
thereby copying the worst feature in the organization of the 
military academy at West Point and the naval academy at 
Annapolis, and giving members of Congress another excuse for 
neglecting their proper legislative functions to busy themselves 
with patronage. This very objectionable section of the bill 
was probably intended as a bid for the votes of the members 
of Congress ; but it is a very small bid, for the thirteenth section 
provides " that instruction shall at all times be as nearly free 
for students as is consistent with the income of the univer- 
sity and the best interests of learning." This is a sounding 
phrase, capable, like not a few other phrases in this bill, of 
widely differing constructions ; but it strongly suggests free 
tuition. Free tuition, in a place of professional or other high 
education, is always objectionable, because it is a perfectly 
indiscriminate charity ; when this indiscriminate charity is to 
be supported by national taxation, it is doubly objectionable. 

The fourteenth section of the bill contains the singular pro- 
vision that " no person shall be admitted for purposes of regu- 
lar study and graduation who has not previously received the 
degree of bachelor of arts, or a degree of equal value, from 
some institution recognized by the university authorities." 
Young Americans do not get the degree of bachelor of arts, 
on the average, before their twenty-second year. On these 
terms, the regular students of the new university would, in 
my judgment, be few, except in the professional departments. 
This provision cannot be a serious one ; it was probably 
intended to quiet the apprehensions of the three hundred 
institutions which now give the degree of bachelor of arts ; 
and, of course, it can be repealed at any time. 

Both the bills under discussion rely upon congressional 
grants or appropriations for the maintenance of the univer- 
sity. Senator Howe's bill does not undertake to define the 
amount of the appropriations required. Senator Sawyer's 
bill grants twenty millions of dollars, in the singular form of 



IT 

an unnegotiable certificate of indebtedness of the United 
States, bearing interest at five per cent a year. One million 
of dollars a year is not a large estimate of the annual cost of 
the proposed university, considering the extreme wasteful- 
ness which characterizes most government expenditures. The 
private incorporated colleges and universities use their scanty 
resources with the greatest possible thrift. Their example is 
a wholesome one. I fear that the example of a university 
which had one hand in the national treasury would not be as 
salutary. 

Both the bills plant the proposed university at Washing- 
ton, a city which is the capital of the United States only in 
the governmental or political sense. This country has no 
London, no Paris, no Berlin, no Vienna, no Rome. We are 
fortunate that there is no single city in which all the activi- 
ties of the nation, commercial, industrial, intellectual, and 
governmental, centre. On the Atlantic, coast are four large 
cities, each with a character and influence of its own ; in the 
northwest is Chicago ; on the Ohio is Cincinnati ; on the Mis- 
sissippi is St. Louis ; on the Pacific, San Francisco. Every 
one of these local centres is vastly more important to the 
country than Washington ; for Washington is a focus of 
neither foreign commerce nor domestic trade, neither manu- 
factures, agriculture, nor mining, neither literature nor art. 
The climate of the city is not very healthy, and the presence 
of Congress, and of the hangers-on of Congress, does not 
make the city a better place of residence for young men at 
the forming period of life. There is no precedent in Europe 
for a single, dominant, national university endowed by gov- 
ernment, and the only one so endowed, and situated at a 
national capital. London is, in every possible sense, the 
capital of Great Britain ; but the chief universities of Great 
Britain are not in London. Berlin is the seat of a Prussian 
university, subsidized by the state ; but Prussia subsidizes 
several other universities as well. The university of Paris 
is only the largest branch of that single organization of public 
instruction which spreads all over France, is maintained by 
the government, and presided over, like the army and the 



18 

navy, by a minister. In continental Europe all universities 
are subsidized by government. Such is the custom of those 
countries, — a custom which is certainly not the outgrowth 
of free institutions. The leading university is now at Ley- 
den, now at Paris, now at Bologna, now at Vienna, now at 
Heidelberg, now at Berlin, and now at Leipzig ; the stream of 
students flowing fitfully from one place to another. The pro- 
posed university at Washington would bear no resemblance 
whatever to any of these famous seats of learning, either in 
its constitution or its surroundings. 

And now let me recall to your minds for a moment the 
second duty which was assigned to the committee appointed 
in St. Louis in 1871. They were in the first place to prepare 
a plan for a national university, and in the second place they 
were " to marshal the strength of the country in systematic 
and effective support of the measure." What has really 
taken place ? In introducing the first bill we have discussed, 
Senator Howe said, apologetically, " I ought to say by way of 
explanation that this bill was not sent to me. It was drawn 
by some one, I do not know who, and sent to my colleague, 
and it is at his request that I present it." In presenting the 
bill which was supposed to have the sanction of this associa- 
tion, Senator Sawyer said, " I wish to say in reference to this 
bill that I introduced it by request. ... I do not wish to be un- 
derstood as recommending it." Neither bill was supported by 
anybody in any way, and neither bill has been heard of since 
it was brought into Congress until this day. The Senators 
who introduced them did not imagine for a moment that any 
legislation would grow out of them. As to the strength of 
the country being marshalled in effective support of either of 
these measures, the idea is comical. The whole proceeding 
is loose, crude, hasty, undignified, and unworthy of the sub- 
ject. 

I turn next to my third topic, — the true policy of our gov- 
ernment as regards university instruction. In almost all the 
writings about a national university, and of course in the two 
Senate bills now under discussion, there will be found the im- 



19 

plication, if not the express assertion, that it is somehow the 
duty of our government to maintain a magnificent university. 
This assumption is the foundation upon which rest the ambi- 
tious projects before us. and many similar schemes. Let me 
try to demonstrate that the foundation is itself unsound. 

The general notion that a beneficent government should pro- 
vide and control an elaborate organization for teaching. ; 
it maintain^ an army, a navy, or a post-office, is of European 
origin, being a legitimate corollary to the theory of government 
by Divine right. It is said that the state is a person having a 
conscience and a moral responsibility- ; that the government 
is the visible representative of a people's civilization, and the 
guardian of its honor and its morals, and should be the em- 
bodiment of all that is high and good in the people's character 
and aspirations. This moral person, this corporate represent- 
ative of a Christian nation, has high duties and functions 
commensurate with its great powers, and none more impera- 
tive than that of diffusing knowledge and advancing science. 

I desire to state this argument for the conduct of hio-h 
educational institutions by government, as a matter of ab- 
stract duty, with all the force which belongs to it : for under 
an endless variety of thin disguises, and with all sorts of am- 
plifications and dilutions, it is a staple commodity with writers 
upon the relation of government to education. The concep- 
tion of government upon which this argument is based is ob- 
solescent everywhere. In a free community the government 
does not hold this parental, or patriarchal, — I should better 
say Godlike. — position. Our government is a group of ser- 
vants appointed to do certain difficult and important work. 
It is not the guardian of the nation's morals : it does not 
necessarily represent the best virtue of the republic, and is 
not responsible for the national character, being itself one of 
the products of that character. The doctrine of state person- 
ality and conscience, and the whole argument to the dignity 
and moral elevation of a Christian nation's government as the 
basis of government duties, are natural enough under Grace- 
of-God governments, but they find no ground of practical 
application to modern republican confederations ; they have no 



20 

bearing on governments considered as purely human agencies, 
with defined powers and limited responsibilities. Moreover, 
for most Americans, these arguments prove a great deal too 
much ; for if they have the least tendency to persuade us that 
government should direct any part of secular education, with 
how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by gov- 
ernment of the religious education of the people ! These 
propositions are indeed the main arguments for an established 
church. Religion is the supreme human interest, govern- 
ment is the supreme human organization ; therefore govern- 
ment ought to take care for religion, and a Christian 
government should maintain distinctively Christian religions 
institutions. This is not theory alone ; it is the practice of all 
Christendom, except in America and Switzerland. Now we 
do not admit it to be our duty to establish a national church. 
We believe not only that our people are more religious than 
many nations which have established churches, but also that 
they are far more religious under their own voluntary system 
than they would be under any government establishment of 
religion. We do not admit for a moment that establishment 
or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or im- 
piety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly 
leave the people to provide themselves with religious institu- 
tions, surely it may leave them to provide suitable universi-_ 
ties for the education of their youth. And here again the 
question of national university or no national university is by 
no means synonymous with the question, Shall the country 
have good university education or not? The only question 
is, Shall we have a university supported and controlled by 
government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities 
l^supported and controlled by other agencies ? 1 

There is then no foundation whatever for the assumption 
that it is the duty of our government to establish a national 
university. I venture to state one broad reason why our gov^.. 
ernment should not establish and maintain a university.? If 
the people of the United States have any special destiny, any 
peculiar function in the world, it is to try to work out, under 
extraordinarily favorable circumstances,- the problem of free 



21 

institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous popula- 
tion, spread over a vast territory. We indeed want to breed 
scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physi- 
cians, jurists, theologians, and orators ; but, first of all, we 
want to breed a race of independent, self-reliant freemen, 
capable of helping, guiding, and governing themselves. Now 
the habit of being helped by the government, even if it be to 
things good in themselves, — to churches, universities, and 
railroads, — is a most insidious and irresistible enemy of re- 
publicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is selfy 
reliance.,'/ With the continental nations of Europe, it is an 
axiom that the government is to do every thing, and is respon- 
sible for every thing. The French have no word for " public 
spirit," for the reason that the sentiment is unknown to them. 
This abject dependence on the government is an accursed in- 
heritance from the days of the divine right of kings. Amer- 
icans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite theory, 
namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly 
assigned it to do, that it is to perforin no function which any 
private agency can perform as well, and that it is not to do a 
public good even, unless that good be otherwise unattainable. 
It is hardly too much to say that this doctrine is the founda- 
tion of our public liberty. So long as the people are really 
free, they will maintain it in theory and in practice. During 
the war of the Rebellion we got accustomed to seeing the gov- 
ernment spend vast sums of money and put forth vast efforts ; 
pnd we asked ourselves — why should not some of these great 
resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to crea- 
tion as well as to destruction ? So we subsidized railroads, 
and steamship companies, and agricultural colleges, and now 
it is proposed to subsidize a university. The fatal objection 
to this subsidizing process is that it saps the foundations of 
public liberty. The only adequate securities of public liberty 
are the national habits, traditions, and character acquired and 
accumulated in the practice of liberty and ,self-control. In- 
terrupt these traditions, break up these habits, or cultivate the 
opposite ones, or poison that national character, and public 
liberty will suddenly be found defenceless. We deceive our- 



/ 



22 

selves dangerously when we think or say that education, 
whether primary or university, can guarantee republican 
institutions. Education can do no such thing. A republican 
people should indeed be educated and intelligent ; but it by 
no means follows that an educated and intelligent people will 
be republican. Do I seem to conjure up imaginary evils to 
follow from this beneficent establishment of a superb national 
university ? We teachers should be the last people to forget 
the sound advice, — obsta principiis. A drop of water will 
put out a spark which otherwise would have kindled a confla- 
gration that rivers could not quench. 

Let us cling fast to the genuine American method — the 
old Massachusetts method — in the matter of public instruc- 
tion. The essential features of that system are local taxes 
for universal elementary education, voted by the citizens them- 
selves ; local elective boards to spend the money raised by tax- 
ation and control the schools ; and, for the higher grades of 
instruction, permanent endowments administered by incorpo- 
rated bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary sys- 
tem, in sharp contrast with the military, despotic organization 
of public instruction which prevails in Prussia and most other 
states of continental Europe. Both systems have peculiar 
advantages, the crowning advantage of the American method 
being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors well understood 
the principle that to make a people free and self-reliant, it is 
necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they do 
not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior 
power might. 

<=-• And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university 
at the capital of the United States, established and supported 
by the general government, more national than any other 
American university. It might be larger and richer than any 
other, and it might not be ; but certainly it could not have a 
monopoly of patriotism, or of catholicity, or of literary or sci- 
entific enthusiasm. There is an attractive comprehensiveness, 
and a suggestion of public spirit and love of country, in the 
term " national ; " but, after all, the adjective only narrows 
and belittles the noble conception contained in the word 



"university." Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, 
law, and theology are larger and more enduring than nations. 
There is something childish in this uneasy hankering for a 
big university in America, as there is also in that impatient 
longing for a distinctive American literature which we so often 
hear expressed. As American life grows more various and 
richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated experi- 
ence, American literature will become richer and more abound- 
ing ; and, in that better day, let us hope that there will be found 
several universities in America, though hj no means one in 
each State, as free, liberal, rich, national, and glorious as the 
warmest advocate of a single, crowning university at the 
national capital could imagine his desired institution to 
become. 



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